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Saturday, Nov 21, 2009
Shelley Winters, actor
"Pet raccoon"
"Marlon Brando already had quite a reputation among theater people as a brilliant actor because of a small part he'd done in Truckline Cafi, in which he had one scene and flashed across the stage like sexual lightning. He also had another extraordinary reputation, but I figured it couldn't be true because when did he have time?..."
" ...Marlon invited me to dinner at his...new apartment one night after my show....
"It was really a cold-water flat, there was ice on the inside of the windows! Marlon was lifting weights in an untorn long-sleeved gray sweat shirt and asked me to take my coat off. 'I'll keep it on,' I said.
"Marlon had a goddamned raccoon in a cage, and I think it was wearing some other raccoon's fur coat, it was so cold in there. And it smelled so bad I immediately told Marlon I couldn't stay unless he put it in the bathroom. Marlon explained that the bathroom was just a toilet and was even colder than the living room, which had the smallest electric heater I had ever seen....Marlon compromised by putting the raccoon in the small bathtub next to the kitchen sink. He put a wooden door over it; then he put the heater under the sink, aimed at the bathtub to keep the damned raccoon warm.... (New York, late 1940s)"
[ from "Shelley II: The Middle of My Century," by Shelley Winters (Simon & Schuster, 1989)]
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Stanley Kramer, film director
"World's greatest actor"
"...I got a call from an energetic young MCA agent named Jay Kantor about a client of his, Marlon Brando, who had never appeared in a film but had become a towering Broadway star as a result of his smash performance in Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire....
"I made a bid of $50,000 for Brando and sent with it a copy of [Carl] Foreman's screen treatment for the film [The Men] we wanted to make....
" For his first visit to my office, I invited several paraplegics from the Birmingham Hospital. I'm not sure how eager they were to welcome him because I had heard some bitter words from them about movie stars who thought they could understand and convey the feelings of paraplegics after just a short interview.
"I think they were startled when Brando arrived, not in fine, tailored clothing but in jeans and a torn T-shirt. He didn't look like a movie star, nor did he act like one, mingling with them as if they were old friends. They received him politely, and when he asked if he could accompany them back to the hospital, they seemed befuddled. Why would he want to go there?
"The next thing I knew, Brando was living at the hospital in a wheelchair and learning how difficult life could be for a paraplegic. He was experiencing, as much as an outsider could, the real, everyday meaning of the role he was about to play.. . . "
"By the time we finished The Men, I was convinced he was the world's greatest actor.... (Hollywood, 1950)"
[from "A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World," by Stanley Kramer with Thomas M. Coffey (Harcourt Brace, 1997)]
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Christopher Isherwood, novelist
"High camp"
" ...the paraplegics [of Birmingham Hospital] had been involved in the shooting of a film about themselves. This was The Men. Its script had been written by Carl Foreman. Fred Zinnemann directed it, Stanley Kramer produced it; its stars were Marlon Brando and Teresa Wright....
"Christopher...enjoyed meeting Brando, although his first impressions were bad. Brando seemed to Christopher to be just another young ham giving himself airs. He was talking about Vivien Leigh, with whom he's spent the whole afternoon, waiting to be called onto the set for a take. And now he gravely announced: 'I don't think she's very sincere.' This was too much for Christopher. 'My God, Mr. Brando,' he exclaimed, 'how sincere do you think you'll be, when you've been in this business as long as she has?!' But, to Christopher's surprise and pleasure, Brando wasn't either offended or crushed. He grinned at Christopher appreciatively, as much as to say, 'Good for you--we understand each other!' What Christopher understood at that moment--or thought he did--was that Brando was capable of high camp and that most of his public behavior was probably camping. As for Brando's private behavior and his private self, I'm no wiser about that now than Christopher was then; I've never gotten even a glimpse. (Hollywood, 1950)"
[from "The Lost Years: A Memoir, 1945-1951," by Christopher Isherwood, edited by Katherine Bucknell, (HarperCollins, 2000)]
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Roger Vadim, film director
"Foot massage"
"I met Marlon about the same time I met Brigitte [Bardot]. I was sitting with Christian Marquand on the terrace of a cafi in the Boulevard Montparnasse when an extraordinarily handsome young man at the next table caught our attention. He had taken off his shoes and was massaging his naked foot, which he had placed on the table between a glass of Perrier and an ashtray. Groaning with ecstasy, like a woman about to have an orgasm, he kept saying, 'Shit ... that feels good ... Shit ... that feels good.'
"We started up a conversation and the Adonis explained that one of his greatest pleasures in life was massaging his feet after walking a long time. He introduced himself as Marlon Brando and told us that he was alone in Paris and living in a very uncomfortable little hotel on the Left Bank. (Paris, 1950)"
[from "Bardot Deneuve Fonda: My Life with the Three Most Beautiful Women in the World," by Roger Vadim (Simon and Schuster, 1986)]
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